Steepsters: What's your worst experience with tea and caffeine?

If I have too much at one time I get the jitters pretty bad, and a headache. If I have it too late in the day, after 3pm, I can’t sleep well. I also grind my teeth sometimes at night and if I have caffeine too late I will grind them pretty good (once I get to sleep) and wake up with a sore jaw and headache.

I was at a womans retreat in the S.F. Bay Area hills and kept drinking caffeine cup by cup not knowing that I was going to get into real trouble…and ended up with a migraine that sent me to the hospital. I could hardly walk or talk. My pulse was up and down along with my blood pressure. Took about a year to find out that I am super sensitive to light, sound, change in temp., some foods, too much caffeine, crowds of people (retreats have all that), and I have fibromyalgia also. Who knew? I never had headaches…I had nausea as a first indicator and confusion.

I drink Community Coffee chicory blend coffee from Louisiana that I order online. Has 1/4 the caffeine so I can have more than one cup (always use way less when brewing with chickory or it’s bitter as heck) and I like it the traditional way with milk in the morning. Now that I drink tea it allows me to have black tea in the early afternoon and go to caffeine free tea in the evening. If I balance it out to 2-3 cups of caffeine a day my brain does not shut down on me and I won’t get a caffeine migraine.

I once felt kind of jittery after drinking a pot (40 oz or so) of Adagio’s Yunnan Jig. I can generally drink quite a bit of tea before feeling over-caffeinated. Green tea and matcha do not affect me as strongly as black tea does, or even the oolong tea served at Chinese restaurants (if I drink several pots of it).